Toutouwai display positive judgement bias when tested in the wild.

ABSTRACT: Cognition, how individuals perceive, store, process and respond to information, influences decision-making. However, biases in cognitive processes can distort behavioural outcomes. Judgement bias occurs when individuals infer information to be more positive, or negative than it is. For captive animals, judgement bias is typically measured by testing behavioural responses to ambiguous cues that are intermediate to cues with learned valence (positive and negative). However, these tests have rarely been used in the wild. We therefore examined if a behavioural test of judgement bias commonly used in captive animals could be adapted to test a wild bird, the toutouwai (North Island robin, Petroica longipes). Toutouwai were faster to approach ambiguous cues that were more similar to a learned pos

SUBMITTER: C Shaw R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12572075 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature